Saturday, July 23, 2011

London Walking Tour

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This past Saturday Le Cool, one of my early finds upon relocating to London in May and my first stop whenever looking for something to do, was hosting the launch party for Artesian Wanders, a walking tour of London in partnership with Fiji Water. Although the walking tour from Camden to Clerkenwell, an area of the city we haven't spent too much time in yet, would've been enough by itself, we were especially looking forward to this event because it would involve an organized pub crawl and free drinks at the final destination (and I'm a whore for free drinks).

As expected, this walk was SO much fun! Mike & I joined a larger group, mostly made up of Le Cool writers but with a few other readers such as myself, and had the best time not only seeing the city from a different perspective (we're never with a group and rarely learn anything historic, or of interest, about our surroundings) but also getting to know new people with similar interests (they were all fans of Le Cool).

The walk followed the path of the Fleet River, which flows underneath the city (who knew?) and which we actually glimpsed through a street grate outside the Prince Albert (perhaps my new favourite pub?).

King's Cross station

Another of the many interesting stops along our walk was at King's Cross (where we arrived from Dundee back in May) and St. Pancras. We discovered not only the circumstances (privatized, competing train companies; capitalism at its best) which caused two train stations to be built right next to each other (seriously, they're neighbours) but also the amazing rejuvenation which St. Pancras has recently gone through (it used to be a hotel and then stood derelict for some time, avoided demolition, and is now a working station again).

We continued on to the Farringdon area, passing the UK headquarters for Amnesty International (a very small and unassuming building), finally arriving at our destination pub, Three Kings, at around 4:30pm (maybe; we weren't really checking the time) where we were greeted by loads of free Palm beer. We mingled with more of our awesome group and then, seemingly only minutes later, it was 7:30pm and we had to leave for our next engagement.

With or without the free beer and Fiji water, this was an amazing way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon and I'm so happy that we did it. We made some new friends and had an amazing experience and would happily do it all again. Our Artesian Wander will definitely go down as one of the highlights from our London summer.